Athanasius’s 39th Festal Letter
January 7, 367
Athanasius’s 39th Festal Letter, issued on January 7, 367, is the oldest known document listing the same twenty-seven books of the New Testament that we recognize today. (A festal letter was an annual letter written by the bishop of Alexandria establishing the date of Easter for the coming year; this letter was also used to clarify or announce other important matters for the churches under Alexandria’s jurisdiction.)
What this tells us is that, by that date, the Church was already working from the same established New Testament canon that we use today. But be careful —it does not mean that January 7, 367, was the day on which the New Testament canon was established. There is no such date. Around 140, Marcion provoked the Church to define its own list of authoritative texts when he produced an edited canon of the Gospel of Luke and Paul’s letters.
In 393, twenty-six years after Athanasius issued the 39th Festal Letter, the Council of Hippo ratified the same list, as did the councils of Carthage in 397 and 419. That all four ratifications occurred over a span of about a half-century does tell us that the Church Fathers saw a need at that time to emphasize clarity on the question of the canon and to put to final rest any lingering doubts about it.
Even though we don’t have a date on which the New Testament canon was established, those who want an annual date on which to celebrate the books of the New Testament could probably do no better than to choose January 7 as the appropriate day.
J. Douglas Johnson is the executive editor of Touchstone and the executive director of the Fellowship of St. James.
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